Written by Cynthia Jackson, the article focuses on the creation and application of rubrics addressing strategies to help students, especially those with learning disabilities, to use them effectively. Jackson begins her article by appropriately quoting K. Montgomery stating that, “most students do not understand why they received a particular grade on an assignment.” Through the use of rubrics, students can complete the same assessment as the teacher. This gives them valuable clues to their understanding of the task and readiness for self-reflection skills. This process allows teachers to guide students toward setting realistic improvement goals. Rubrics provide the opportunity for both formative and summative assessment. Rubrics assist students to know in advance what is expected of them. Using the criteria as expectations, the rubric becomes a project guide. The student sets goals and the progress of learning can be evaluated. The rubric also provides a guide for communication between teachers, parents, and the student; academic success is defined and refined toward the final product. As summative assessment the rubric is used to award a final grade to the final product.
The main focus of the article is to address the use of rubrics with students with special needs. According to Jackson, “students who have learning disabilities need a systematic way to help assess their own and their peers’ work.” Self assessments and peer assessments are necessary to help students locate their errors, determine a better way to approach a task, and learn the necessary information needed to perform the task. The rubric serves as a systematic tool to guide students’ learning. In order to introduce rubrics to students, it is important to give students opportunities to become familiar with them. Jackson identifies seven steps teachers can use introduce rubrics that include: looking at models, listing criteria, articulating gradations of quality, practice on models, use self assessment and peer assessment, revise, and use teacher assessment. Jackson continues by introducing her method as a breakdown of the word ‘rubric’. Beginning with R, students can read the rubric and material to be graded. The students then Use the rubric to give an initial score. By Bringing a buddy to help, the student gets a peers perspective in the rating process. Together, they can Review the material together, Identify and award the scores together, and Check the scores again.
Concluding her article, Jackson introduces common problems and suggestions for using grading rubrics. Due to unclear language, students may not understand assessment criteria. This issue may be resolved by asking student to interpret the criteria and ask them to suggest specific or precise words to clarify the language. When students do not understand the differences among gradations of quality, they can relate the gradation to measurable and observable terms awarding one point value for each instead of a range. A final common problem and suggestion is the lack of understanding how to obtain a total score or the meaning of the total score. This can be rectified defining the meaning of all possible total scores.
Rubrics provide the guidelines to help students, parents, and teachers to understand the expectations of an assignment before the project begins. Using rubrics enable students to evaluate and apply strategies to their own work. When considering students with learning disabilities, it provides them the security and direction needed to maintain focus and direction through the process of the assignment.